Page 44 of The Broken Wing Princess

“God fucking bless Tennessee,” Ashley noted to herself, thinking of everything that she had done throughout the years. She had gone through so many cornfield mazes that she waspractically an expert at navigating hedges. She was also stubborn enough to dive through the hedges, disregarding all the branches that poked at her and using all her strength to carry on. If the way out of the maze was real, then she was going to fucking find it. She would just keep walking forward until she found an exit, diving through all the bushes and hardly caring about them. That seemed like the only logical escape in her mind and the only one that she could really take.

But the moment that Ashley decided on this, the world decided to shift. And by shift, she meant that her father had decided to show up. He’d decided that he was going to stop her from leaving, which, because he currently had an iron circle around his neck, wasn’t exactly something that she could blame him for.

But regardless of whether or not she could blame her own father, she could blame herself if she didn’t manage to leave, and so Ashley hightailed it out of there, pulling her knees as high as possible as the giant werewolf stumbled into the maze, tearing through a hedge and turning its snout towards the air, trying to sniff her out among the mess that was currently going on.

“Giant fucking dragons, werewolves, and magic,” Ashley said to herself, unable to stop from shaking her head at the very idea, “does anything else want to go wrong today? Are there any other elements that I need to know about this story?”

In fact, she promised herself that if she survived this, if she somehow managed to escape the werewolf that she called her father, who was currently chasing her down, then she was going to live a normal life. She was going to become a rancher somewhere, live off-grid, and not be involved in any of this. She was going to take back what little sense there was in this world, and she was going to claim it for herself. All she had to do was somehow survive.

“Easier said than done,” Ashley noted to herself, hating the fact that this might be how it all ended, and that she was going to die as a result of everyone else’s actions.

She had never wanted to become a queen. She had never wanted to become a princess. She had never meant to meet her brother. She’d always meant to take care of her father and nothing else, but now if she wasn’t quick enough, then he was going to be the one to kill her. She was going to lose everything to him. And so, she ran until her body almost gave out. She ran until her bones screamed at her to stop until her mind was worrying until she could hardly breathe.

In the background, Ashley could hear the dragons roaring out, their voices shaking the ground beneath her feet with every step that she took. She could feel the heat from their fire begin to clip at the hedges, tearing down the hedge maze even though her brother had tried so hard to preserve it. She could feel the earth protesting their every move and feel the wind shift beneath their wings, sending massive bursts in her direction. And yet, she kept running, tearing through branch after branch and trying to ignore the way that it tore her skin, her eyes closing, her heartbeat just about to go through her chest.

But the one thing she couldn’t hear was the wolf running behind her. The one thing she couldn’t hear that she needed to hear more than anything was her father.

And that realization was what terrified her more than anything else. Because out of all the things in this place, out of all the things lurking in that maze, out of her lover and her brother and all of that, only one of them was a werewolf trained to protect the dragons. There was a reason why he had been put on the guard, to begin with, and while he had been gentle with her before, she couldn’t imagine the way that he would act now that she was threatening his peace. The small light that her brother had gifted him was the happiness he had just found.

Ashley imagined that before she had come into his life, her father had had a life of his own. He must have had lovers, and he had things to leave behind, but he had chosen her over everything. And now she was repaying him by choosing herself, running as hard as possible, and wishing for a moment that everything would work out if she could become her own person.

And then, just like the world was taunting her for dreaming, she saw it. The world knew that it had to dangle a carrot in front of her nose to make her run.

The opening at the end of the hedge maze. The place where the bushes broke was where she could finally see the light. Her one chance to escape. Ashley could hardly believe that it was actually right there, just in front of her, and more than she could hardly believe was the fact that not that far from it was a fucking car. And the moment that she got in that car, she knew that there would be no way that anything could catch her. She was going to explore it and go a hundred mph. All she had to do was make it that far.

Which was why, of course, the only thing that she couldn’t do was to manage to make it that far.

She felt him before she saw him, feeling the heavy weight that crushed her down to the ground and wincing as she realized that she was trapped. Her scream caught in the back of her throat. Her whole body fought against it, and yet, try as she might, she couldn’t get out.

She could feel her father above her. She knew that there was no escape, that a feral sense now ruled the wolf that had pinned her down. That much was clear by the way that he tore at her skin, fighting her back every time that she struggled.

And yet, Ashley continued to try. She kept reaching for that borderline, and she choked, trying to get out, to save herself. And, as she reached for that borderline and began to cry, she heard her father’s voice fill her ears once more, the monsterabove her finely shifting from that of a werewolf into an actual man.

“Ashley,” he pleaded.

“Ashley,” he said, and finally, with the softness of her father’s voice, the fight died out of her. Thick tears rolled down her face as Ashley came to understand exactly what her lot was in life, and that this was it.